Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana Review

thesixthaxis.com:

We’ve finally reached the point that even remakes are being remastered. Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana isn’t just a remaster of a 2010 PSP game being given new life on modern consoles, because even that was a localised port of a 2005 PC remake of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys back in 1989! Despite, or perhaps because of, all those steps of separation from the original release, the result is one of the most refreshing and immediately engaging entries in this decades-old franchise.

Even though recent original entries in the series, like last year’s Ys X: Nordics, are chasing higher fidelity and expanded gameplay sub-systems, when you look at the gaming landscape at large it’s clear that more and more people yearn for artistically driven and lower fidelity games that wear retro charm on their sleeve. Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana in 2005 was a complete reimagining of Ys III, stepping back from the side-scrolling spin-off from the original series formula to better match the action of Ys IV, but twenty years on from that, it doesn’t try to shoot for the increasingly unobtainable fidelity-focused goals of modern gaming. This release instead celebrates its roots at every opportunity.

In that sense, Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana feels like an incredibly timely release – on PlayStation 5 the game certainly runs at a higher resolution than ever and a consistent framerate, but the character models and textures look just like they did on PSP and PC, and you have a choice between original and refined graphics for the dialogue character art. Of the three available soundtrack options, one of them is the original Wanderers from Ys PC-88 soundtrack and the other is the only slightly-less-old-school X68000 soundtrack from the 2005 PC release.

One of the major charming elements of the Ys franchise is that the combat and gameplay was so ahead of it’s time. A groundbreaking, lightning-fast action game from like this from 20 years ago isn’t any less fun or exciting today. You’ll barely